Harry Potter and the Choo Choo Gang
by Spetmber
Summary: Harry Potter and his pals are on the Hogwarts Express, ready to start third year, when all of a sudden the usual chaos hits just a smidge too early, and the golden trio become...locomotives? Set before the train stops and the dementor is seen/dismissed by Lupin.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One: The Raspberry Heard Round the World

Harry Potter, the boy who lived, had just arrived with the Weasleys to platform 9 and ¾, and Harry and his pals were just about ready to start their next adventure as wizards. Goofing off on the train, as per the usual routine, the three sat laughing as the trolley bearing dozens of delicious snacks passed through their car on the Hogwarts Express.

"I wonder what happens when you say something that isn't a wizard spell, but you do a little...y'know," Ron said, swishing his pointer finger in the air.

"You'd best not try Ron, you'll get us all killed!"

"Oh Hermione, I'm sure it would be fine. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? If it isn't a spell, nothing will happen, right?"

"But Harry—" Hermione protested, but as always, to no avail.

"Ease up Hermione, what if I just..."

"Nah, Ron, Allow me." Harry then took a great deep breath, and while swishing and flicking his wand in the air, blew the biggest raspberry his mouth could muster.

And Just like that, the Golden Trio were transported to the platform at Hogsmeade station... and suddenly, Ron's face got rounder. Paler. Hermione's too. Harry looked in a window of a nearby locomotive and suddenly saw his own face losing color, turning grey, getting rounder.

"Harry, what's happening?" Ron said, and just like that, he started to float over the tracks. "Harry! Harry do something!" He continued, but it was too late. Ronald Weasley had begun to sprout wheels all along his body, and his orange hair became the coloring of..what appeared to be paint down his long, now rounded, metal body.

Harry turned to look at Hermione, and the exact same thing was happening to her, only her metal, cylindrical body was turning a honey-brown color.

"Harry!" She shouted, floating above the tracks. Ron had landed, wheels on the tracks, and was now a full-blown tank engine. Hermione slowly became the same, as Harry began to float. Together, within minutes, the trio were transformed into trains, resting on the tracks right ahead of where the Hogwarts Express would usually pull in.

"What I was GOING to say," Hermione began, "was, 'But Harry, what if someone had already made a spell out of whatever you're about to say, and we just never learned it yet.' We ARE only year three after all."

Ron began to mimic her in a whiny voice, to which she rolled her tank-engine eyes, and blew a puff of smoke from her shiny new chimney.

"Harry, what are we going to do now?"

"Hmmm," He said, and Harry thought to himself for a moment. _Soon Hagrid will be here to collect the first years. If we wait here long enough, maybe he will notice us!"_

He then looked over at Hermione on the track to his left, and repeated the thought, this time aloud.

"We're not even at Hogwarts yet and you're already going to take away all of Gryffindor's house points... We're all going to get detention!"

"Hermione, stop worrying, Harry'll get us out of it, he always does! Right Harry?"

Harry appreciated Ron's vote of confidence, but this time?

This time, he wasn't so sure.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Locomotion in Motion

Harry was beginning to stress and steam when Hagrid huffed and puffed his way toward the platform. _Thank Goodness, _Harry thought, _Hagrid will know what to do. _

Harry whistled, steamed, and shouted: "HAGRID! HAGRID OVER HERE!"

"'Arry? That you? Where are ya, boy?" Hagrid shouted, searching his surroundings. Just as Hagrid was lifting the lid off a trash can to check inside for Harry, he heard Harry bellow:

"No Hagrid, the tracks! I'm on the tracks! I'm... I'm a tank engine Hagrid!"

Hagrid slowly put the lid back on the trash can and turned around to see Harry and his two best friends faces on the fronts of three trains: One orange, one black, and one honey-brown.

"Oh Merlin... 'Arry, what've'ye got yerself into now?"

Hermione then spoke up.

"Can you get Dumbledore, Hagrid? Please? Please Hagrid I don't want to be a train, Hagrid my parents are dentists, how are they going to brush my big train teeth?"

"Relax 'mione, we'll figure this out. If only ye knew how to apparate, we'd be able to get ye off of these here tracks... Oh I know! I'll call dumbledore with floo powder from inside the station, they've got a fireplace somewhere in there..." and just like that, Hagrid was gone, and the trio were left alone again.

"Harry, I can't believe you've done this," said Hermione.

"Harry! I've got a whistle!" Ron said, and he then began a whistle rendition of the past year's sorting hat song.

"Harry, still stressed, tried to look around. As a steam engine, he had very little peripheral vision, but from what he could see, the station looked relatively well kept. He wondered how many times the Hogwarts Express barrelled through this station—_was it only the beginning and ending of every academic year? Or was it, like, all the time? _

Within about five minutes, or what felt like an hour in steam-engine-time, Hagrid returned with Dumbledore in tow.

"Oh, Harry." Dumbledore said, as he stepped forward onto the tracks.

He caressed the giant, round, steam-engine faces of Ron, then Harry, and then Hermione.

"Well, you can't stay here," he said, and behind him, Professors McGonagal and Snape appeared.

"Potter. Why am I not surprised..." sneered Snape.

McGonagal rolled her eyes, put a hand on Hermione, and safely apparated Hermione and herself to the grass by Hagrid's hut. Behind her, Snape apparated with Ron, and Dumbledore with Harry.

"Thank you," said Hermione. "I tried to stop them, professor, I-"

"You did not succeed," McGonagal said, stifling a laugh, and putting on her most stern face. "So which one of you did it?"

"Did what?" Ron asked, clueless as always.

"Well, blew the raspberry, of course." _Dumbledore._ Suddenly, Harry felt incredibly guilty, both for physically using magic so carelessly and not taking it as seriously as he'd been told to by every single adult he'd encountered in his short time at Hogwarts. Harry looked down, and Dumbledore laughed. "Do you know how many times this happens, Harry?"

Harry would've shrugged if he could, but he couldn't. Instead, he just puffed one tiny cloud of steam and sighed.

"Harry, you are not the first to jokingly swish and flick with a raspberry. It used to happen so often, in fact, that a wizard who will remain nameless at this juncture, took the time to create the spell and what it would do. The charm will be in effect until the countercharm is cast, and, well... none of you have use of your wands at the moment...

"Dumbledore please, you have to change us back!"

"Hmm, not quite, Hermione, I do not have to change you back. I would like to change you back. Instead of detentions for this, you will live out the rest of the day as tank engines. Hopefully then, you will have learned your lesson."

"McGonagal gasped. "But Dumbledore!"

Ron blew a huge billowing tower of smoke.

"That means we'll miss the feast!"

"Indeed, you will. The castle is protected from oncoming trains, I'm afraid. If not for those protections, I'm sure Harrol—I mean, the Hogwarts Express, would have stormed it by now."

"Dumbledore... who's Harrold?" McGonagal asked, horrified at what she was assuming.

"Ah, Professor McGonagal, you've assumed correct. A particularly bad and wildly popular student back in the day, Harold Forbisher invented the spell Harry had cast, the raspberry. He had me invent the countercharm."

"And you didn't help—?

"Of course not. Hogwarts needed a train! Anyway, off you pop the three of you, you've got some adjusting to do I'm sure."

Hermione's big tank engine eyes rolled around and around in her puzzlement. "This, this, this is insane! Dumbledore please! Professors, please make him reconsider! We won't know the password for Gryffindor tower!"

"But Hermione," Dumbledore said, turning around, "I thought you'd love to learn a lesson?" and with that, the three professors were gone.

Hermione scoffed. "Professors back home would never..."

"Wouldn't they though? I hear muggle professors can be real tough."

"They let Dudley bully me constantly, they'd definitely do this Hermione."

"Maybe YOUR professors, but not mine." Hermione puffed out some steam, and barrelled ahead of the others in the field.

"What?" She asked. "I don't want my wheels getting stuck in the mud, now do I?"


End file.
